Date Published:
May 2005

L’Encyclopédie de l’histoire du Québec / The Quebec History Encyclopedia

Aeneas McDonell Dawson

Dawson, Aeneas McDonell (1810-1894), priest and poet, was born at Redhaven, Banffshire, Scotland, on July 30, 1810. He was ordained a priest of the Roman Catholic Church in 1835, and in 1854 he came to Canada. He published several volumes of verse: The massacre of Oszmania (Glasgow, 1844), Lament for the Rt. Rev. James Gillis, D.D., bishop of Edinburgh, and other poems (London and Ottawa, 1864), Our strength and their strength (Ottawa, 1870), Zenobia, queen of Palmyra (Ottawa, 1883), and Dominion day, Caractacus, Malcolm avid Margaret (Ottawa, 1886). He was the author also of a number of translations from the French, of a descriptive volume entitled The North West Territory and British Columbia (Ottawa, 1881), and of a history of The Catholics of Scotland (Ottawa, 1890). He died at Ottawa on December 29, 1894. See H. J. Morgan, In Memoriam: Recollections of Father Dawson (Ottawa, 1895); and Proceedings at the presentation of a public testimonial to the Very Rev. A McD. Dawson, by citizens of Ottawa (Ottawa, 1891).

Source: W. Stewart Wallace, ed., The Encyclopedia of Canada, Vol. II, Toronto, University Associates of Canada, 1948, 411p., p. 184.